What to focus on

Some students mistakenly believe that they need to speak with a British or American accent on the exam. THIS IS FALSE. Your accent is fine! 

However, sometimes students have difficulty making certain sounds in English, which makes it hard to understand them so it's common for these students to have to put in extra work into saying certain sounds correctly. This helps them be better understood. 

If people say they have trouble understanding you because of your accent, then you may need work on certain sounds. I'm more than happy to speak with you during a lesson and let you know which sounds you can improve on. 

Considerations at an intermediate level:

• You should be able to say -ED past tense verbs and adjectives with the correct, blended sound.

• You should be able to produce vowel sounds fairly accurately and there's no confusion when you say minimal pairs (words like where / were or fill / feel - these words vary only by a single sound).

• You should add an extra syllable when saying third person singular verbs or plural nouns when it's required (it happens when the -S follows certain sounds).

Other considerations at an advanced level:

• • • You should also concentrate on word stress and getting those details accurate. For example, the word stress often changed depending on the type of word (economy, economics, economically, economist, etc.). Also, sometimes the meaning of words change depending on word stress (produce [noun] is different from produce [verb]). 

    • At an upper-advanced level, connected speech becomes important. At a lower level, being aware of connected speech and how natives blend words together will also help your listening comprehension.

    • Your sentence stress and tone should eventually become more natural, as well.